Milky Way Center - 3 Views (Canvas)

The center of our Milky Way (that bright white spot towards the
center/right) is a composite of photos captured by the Chandra X-ray
Observatory, Spitzer Space Telescope, and the Hubble Space Telescope. It
is a combination of dust-ignoring infrared and x-ray light images that
expose the explosive activity. The entire width of the image is about
half a degree (same width in the night sky as the moon). The yellow and
red "fingers" are hot gasses caused by thousands of stars.

Chandra's x-ray abilities expose the pink areas as low energy x-rays and
the blue areas as high energy x-rays. All of those dots are x-rays
irradiating from near black holes and other dense bodies. The bright
spot of the photo shows x-ray light coming from super-heated gas from
giant star gas, explosions, and from the area surrounding the
supermassive black hole in the middle of our galaxy (which is ~4 million
times more massive than the sun).

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